Summary of Important points

The following summary of the constitution is only intended to clarify the most important
features of the constitution. The
text starting with Constitution
is the official Constitution of PEAR.

Most importantly, this document's main purpose is to enable developers to
innovate in a supportive environment, to foster good will between developers,
to encourage best practices and to provide a clear path for resolving disputes.
PEAR is about bringing PHP developers together to provide great solutions to
the problems we encounter every day through the PHP language,
it is ideal if the constitution is ancillary to the main activity at pear.php.net:
coding.

Developers have supreme power over ultimately what bugs/features will be
assigned to specific roadmap versions, and to releasing package versions.
Developers will have to cede some control over API
decisions/QA/docs to the collective that contains their package. Developers may be
expected to mentor a new developer and help introduce them to the
systems within PEAR (how to package, document, test, etc.)

In other words, the bulk of the day-to-day power will remain with
developers, but some of the QA decisions and individual ownership will
be relinquished to the collective that contains the package.

Collectives have supreme power over packages within the collective
in terms of API decisions, QA, documentation, defining the way
collaboration works in the collective, choosing a collective leader or
leaders, self-promotion of packages within the collective and assigning
mentors to new developers of packages within the collective.

The PEAR Group only has power over issues that affect all of PEAR such as
coding standards, SVN karma, and all major decisions made about PEAR as
a whole. For example, licenses allowed and what defines a collective are
two issues that only the PEAR Group can resolve.

The PEAR president has no power over any of the things above, except for
the ability to veto a PEAR Group decision. The president cannot create
policy. The president's main job is public relations, talking to people outside
of PEAR like an ambassador, trying to recruit new developers or bring
packages into PEAR, and to solve big emergencies in a hurry such as finding
a new hosting provider should the donated space for pear.php.net disappear.